Comments on: The Definition of WMDhttp://www.alphadictionary.com/blog/?p=51
A Blog about Words and Language(s) from alphaDictionary.comMon, 02 Mar 2015 11:42:57 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1By: rbeardhttp://www.alphadictionary.com/blog/?p=51&cpage=1#comment-401
Wed, 04 Oct 2006 01:10:57 +0000http://www.alphadictionary.com/blog/?p=51#comment-401Words and phrases serve a couple of functions. The two most prominent are description and designation (though that is not the linguistic term, which refuses to surface in my mind right now). That is, they can describe a situation or just indicate or name it. “John” doesn’t describe anything, just designates a particular individual. “Baker” is descriptive in that it tells us its reference is someone who bakes. As usual, distinctions get fuzzy.

Descriptively, a weapon of mass destruction is precisely that: any weapon that is used for the mass destruction (of people implied). However, designatively, this phrase can be used much more narrowly and, as you rightly point out, usually is. I guess what I did in this blog is jump from one function to another without warning anyone. But then it was just the linguistic excuse for an attempt to express futile frustration.

Still and all, I don’t recall a situation in which 6-11 year-old girls were lined up against a blackboard and stabbed to death. (Aah, yes; there was Richard Speck but he was a rarity.) Anyway, I’ve never liked the parallel. Cars kill but that is not their designated function; knives have a useful function for which they are mostly used. A handgun is designed and manufactured for the sole purpose of killing human beings who tend to run and hide when they see a gun that cannot be concealed.

]]>By: Larryhttp://www.alphadictionary.com/blog/?p=51&cpage=1#comment-400
Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:44:27 +0000http://www.alphadictionary.com/blog/?p=51#comment-400No, I wouldn’t call it terrorism, and handguns should not be included in in the definition of WMDs. People have been killing each other since Cain slew Abel, to use a Biblical reference, if not before then. Laws against murder have been around long before the development of firearms. The Bible contains them, as does the Code of Hammurabi.

Terrorism usually has political overtones that ordinary violence doesn’t have. The closest thing to terrorism would be serial killers such as the one in Arizona, the “Son of Sam,” or the DC or Ohio snipers. They strike terror into a population because their victims seem to be random.

Several years ago near where I live, one roommate killed another with a steak knife over a drug deal as I recall. Another man bludgeoned his mother to death with a staute of the Blessed Virgin Mary because the mother would not give him any money for drugs. Shall we outlaw kitchen cutlery and religious icons?

A WMD is a weapon of _mass_ destruction: one weapon causes mass casualties, such as a gas attack, a biological attack, or a nuclear attack. While many may be killed by people wielding guns, it is done many people with many guns, not a single gun. A single WMD could kill much more than 12,000 people.

From what I’ve heard on the news, these murders at the Amish school were not an act of terrorism but a simple multiple murder perpetrated by some tortured soul who snapped from some as yet unknown psychological problem. It was obviously well-planned, but it looks like the school was just a target of opportunity because it was so vulnerable rather than being a target because it was Amish. “Who needs security at an Amish school? That’s for big cities that are rife with violence!”

You don’t know why you find crimes (“terrorism”) against the Amish and Mennonites especially heinous? I do–it’s because they’re committed against a group that cannot, or will not, defend itself, all because of their pacifist beliefs, and in this particular case, against the most vulnerable part of all groups: children. It breaks one’s heart.